Business World

Journal Record, The (Oklahoma City), Jun 30, 1999

"People don't sugarcoat. They don't sweet talk it. They just tell it like it is" through e-mail, Stephanie Watts Sussman, the study's co-author, said. That doesn't necessarily mean it's always better, researchers said. There are some cases where face-to-face communication is preferable. For instance, there are times when delivering bad news in person is a sign that the news is important and the deliverer cares about the recipient.

It's important to examine how bad news gets delivered because receiving accurate information -- even if it's negative -- can be the first step toward helping an organization or an individual improve, the authors said in their study. Eating at ESPN WASHINGTON (Bloomberg) -- Walt Disney unit ESPN said it plans to open sports-themed restaurants in Atlanta and Washington next year. The cable broadcaster's first ESPN Zone restaurant opened in July 1998 in Baltimore. Others are scheduled to open this year in Chicago and New York. The 34,000-square-foot restaurant in Atlanta is scheduled to open in time for next season's Super Bowl. The Washington-based restaurant, a 41,000-square foot project, is scheduled to open in the spring of 2000. The restaurants will feature replicas of ESPN's studio sets, screening rooms with broadcasts of sporting events worldwide and areas where customers can play games, ESPN said. Gender reversal BOSTON (AP) -- A car dealership has paid $125,000 to four men who claimed they were sexually harassed by their male boss, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said. The settlement resolves a complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Boston alleging that the four salesmen were subjected to continuing acts of sexual harassment between 1993 and 1995, said Katherine Bissell, an attorney at the EEOC's New York District Office. The men worked at the H.J. Nassar Motor Co. in Lawrence, Mass., and were allegedly subjected to varying degrees of sexual harassment by their manager, including touching and verbal remarks, Bissell said. The sales manager's name was not released. The men -- who will each get about $31,000 -- were paid last week, Bissell said. The four men, as well as the sales manager, are no longer working at the company. "This is definitely an unusual case in terms of the gender," Bissell said. "Most of the harassment cases are females complaining about men." Guys available SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) -- Silicon Valley has earned a dubious distinction: it is now home to more unattached men than any other major metropolitan area. There were 5,372 more single men than women aged 20 to 45 in Santa Clara County in October, according to census data and market updates compiled by Claritas Inc., a marketing information company in Arlington, Va. High-tech professions have traditionally attracted more men than women and the study gives the latest picture of the disparity in America's technology capital. Anchorage, Alaska, where 52 percent of the population is male, still has the largest guy surplus in percentage terms. But Santa Clara County, the heart of Silicon Valley, is 50.4 percent male, which means it reigns in sheer numbers of available bachelors. In comparison, New York, Los Angeles, Boston, Houston and Philadelphia all have single-guy deficits that run into the tens and even hundreds of thousands. Cleaning the flag WASHINGTON (NYT) -- The Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History has begun the painstaking process of conserving the Star-Spangled Banner, and it is doing it in full view of the public, behind a floor-to-ceiling glass wall. Francis Scott Key saw the flag still waving after Fort McHenry repulsed an attack on Baltimore by the British during the War of 1812, inspiring him to write the poem that was later set to music as the national anthem. The flag, which came to the museum in 1907, has undergone two previous conservation treatments in 1914 and in 1982. During the three years that it will take to clean the flag, visitors to the museum will be able to watch as a squad of textile conservation experts leans from a gantry to snip away the stitches that bind the 30-by-34-foot flag to a linen backing; they will then remove decades of dirt from the woolen fabric. Alta Vista sold NEW YORK (AP) -- CMGI, a major investor in Internet businesses, is buying Compaq Computer's AltaVista Web site in a $2.3 billion deal that gives it a new portal to draw visitors to its array of online services. The announcement Tuesday ended months of speculation over the fate of Compaq's property. AltaVista, in addition to its widely used search engine for navigating the Web, offers news, stock quotes and shopping services and took in about $40 million in revenue last year. But it ranked only No. 15 among networks of Web sites last month, with 9.5 million visitors, according to the Media Metrix research firm. CMGI, based in Andover, Mass., plans to use AltaVista as a hub to lead Web surfers to other corners of its online empire, including stakes in lesser-known properties such as Ancestry.com, CarParts.com, Furniture.com and Raging Bull, a financial investment forum. For its part, Compaq, the world's second-largest computer maker, hopes to sell more machines to CMGI's Internet companies to host their Web sites and conduct online transactions. Farewell tellers MINNEAPOLIS (AP) -- Wells Fargo & Co. will cut 1,000 teller jobs at its Norwest Bank branches as part of the newly merged bank's plan to reduce its work force. Many of the jobs will be eliminated through attrition, said Wells spokesman Larry Haeg. Between 30 and 40 percent of tellers turn over each year. Wells Fargo uses sophisticated staffing models to determine its work force needs in its banks. Norwest did not use such advanced models, which sometimes led to overstaffing, said analyst Jay Tejera of Ragen MacKenzie in Seattle. The cutback in teller positions is part of San Francisco-based Wells Fargo's effort to eliminate about 4,600 jobs since its merger with Minneapolis-based Norwest. The $32 billion merger was approved in November, creating the nation's seventh largest bank with 92,000 employees. Electric Toyotas TOKYO (AP) -- Toyota Motor Corp. will commercialize a pollution- free fuel cell electric vehicle in 2003, aiming to become the first to put such a vehicle on the market, Toyota chairman Hiroshi Okuda was quoted as saying Tuesday. The new vehicle will be mass-produced starting in 2003, Okuda was quoted as telling reporters by Kyodo News service. Toyota is apparently seeking to set a global standard for fuel cell vehicles by putting the vehicle on the market before the German- U.S. automaker DaimlerChrysler AG, which plans to market one by 2004, Kyodo reported. The fuel cell electric vehicle utilizes an electrochemical reaction between hydrogen and oxygen within the fuel cells, rather than through the combustion of fossil fuels. Toyota has set up a division to develop fuel cell technologies. Marlboro leaves Colombia BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) -- Philip Morris announced Tuesday that it would stop importing Marlboro cigarettes to Colombia, citing tariffs it called arbitrarily high. The Colombian government, for its part, accused the tobacco giant of declaring a value for the popular cigarette brand five times lower than its price in the United States, the country of origin. Philip Morris said it could not export cigarettes from the United States while they continue to be subject to tariffs "based on inflated values" that Colombia's customs agency began imposing in 1996. Philip Morris said it had won 6 percent of the Colombian market since it began importing Marlboro cigarettes in 1991. It claimed the tariffs set by the customs agency, or DIAN, were both illegal in Colombia and violated the GATT international trade agreement. DIAN spokesman Henry Guarin said Philip Morris had quietly suspended imports a month ago to protest DIAN's insistence on valuing a pack of Marlboro cigarettes at $1.27 while the company declared a value of 24 cents a pack. Even if Philip Morris halts the legal imports, however, Marlboro cigarettes are not apt to disappear from Colombia. An estimated 70 percent of the Marlboro cigarettes sold in the country are contraband, said Guarin. Importing contraband cigarettes, typically from the Caribbean island of Aruba, is a popular way for Colombian drug traffickers to launder money. Fourth of July Salute OKLAHOMA CITY (JR) -- The Eastern Oklahoma County Tourism Council and Tinker Air Force Base will present the third annual Star Spangled Salute at 4 p.m. July 4. Gates will open at 3 p.m. for the free celebration open to the public. Access will be available through the Lancer Gate off Douglas Boulevard and Hruskocy Gate off Interstate 40. A fireworks display is scheduled at 9:45 p.m. Activities will include walk-through tours of the Navy "Tacamo" E- 6A aircraft, the Air Force "AWACS" E-3, bull riding demonstrations and an exhibition of radio-controlled airplanes at 5 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. There also will be a children's activity area and games for adults. Musical talent will be featured throughout the day with a performance by Mike Black and the Stingrays at 8 p.m. TV wakes up NEW YORK (AP) -- Assigned to a 5:30 a.m. newscast on New York's WNBC-TV, anchorman Maurice DuBois thought, only half-jokingly, that it was "the end of the world." Who was going to watch him at an hour only farmers could love? Plenty of people, much to his surprise. Early morning represents the new -- and perhaps only -- boom time for television viewership as programmers wake up to the fact that more Americans are climbing out of bed early these days. Local news broadcasts are coming on earlier and earlier and more people are tuning in. A little later, at 7 a.m., ABC, CBS and NBC news shows are getting the special attention of network executives who suddenly see them as cash cows. America is becoming a nation of early risers, as people get a jump on the morning commute, work out in a gym or get the kids off to school. A study by the National Sleep Foundation this year found 51 percent of Americans say they get up at 6 a.m. or earlier, an increase of 5 percent over 1995. "It is a whole sociological shift," says early riser Jeff Zucker, executive producer of NBC's Today show. "We see it in the way people are getting their news." This spring, for the first time, more people watched the first half-hour of Today than one of the evening news programs, in this case CBS Evening News. Only in New York NEW YORK (NYT) -- Paul Aberasturi, the chief financial officer of a midtown textile company, and an associate, Matt Pfeufer, grabbed a taxi to lunch downtown. The men, both from Long Island, were as clean-cut as choirboys on Christmas Day. Successful, serious, suburban types. But there they were at Peanut Butter and Co., a new restaurant in the West Village that serves, with rare exception, peanut butter sandwiches -- creative, innovative peanut butter sandwiches, but peanut butter sandwiches nonetheless. Aberasturi devoured a white-chocolate peanut butter and orange marmalade sandwich, while Pfeufer wolfed down the Elvis, a grilled peanut butter sandwich crammed with sliced bananas and drizzled with honey. Maybe only in New York, where everybody is always looking for something new, could a restaurant that serves fancy peanut butter sandwiches find a place in the heart of the public. But at what price comfort? Aberasturi, who washed his sandwich down with apple juice, paid $8 for his lunch ($5.50 for the sandwich and $2.50 for his juice), and Pfeufer, who also ordered apple juice, plunked down $8.50 for his midday meal ($6 for the sandwich).